Nomadland

Frances McDormand delivers the performance of her career in this triple Oscar-winner from Chloé Zhao: best film, director and actress. It is a docu-fiction about the American phenomenon of “nomads”: sixtysomething retirees pauperised by the 2008 crash and roaming the country in camper vans looking for seasonal work. McDormand plays a fictional “nomad”, and Zhao stages wonderfully conceived encounters with the real thing. Moving, insightful, superb.
17 May

Sound of Metal

A fiercely intelligent and passionate performance from Riz Ahmed has made Sound of Metal one of the year’s great movie talking points, now getting a cinema showing after an online release. He is Ruben, a heavy-metal drummer who realises to his horror that he is losing his hearing and joins a therapeutic community for hearing-impaired people run by a tough Vietnam vet called Joe – a great performance from Paul Raci.
17 May

The Human Voice

Here is a bravura new 30-minute special from Pedro Almodóvar and Tilda Swinton, shown in cinemas along with a pre-recorded Q&A with director and star on Zoom. Almodóvar fans won’t want to miss it: a fascinatingly theatrical piece, adapted from Jean Cocteau’s stage play, that speaks to the traumatised lockdown spirit. Swinton is all alone in her Madrid apartment, speaking on her mobile (through cordless Apple earphones) to the lover who has left her. Then she pops down to the hardware store for an axe.
19 May

Rare Beasts

The romcom is broken up and reassembled here by Billie Piper, a valuable talent who stars and makes her audacious directing debut with a challenging, applecart-upsetting movie that divided opinions when it premiered at the Venice film festival. She plays a tough-minded single mum who finds herself falling for a tricky customer played by Leo Bill, and her parents (played by Kerry Fox and David Thewlis) aren’t the easiest people to get on with.
21 May

First Cow

One of the best movies of the year sidles into view without much fanfare. Kelly Reichardt’s film is a gripping tale of the old American west: two slippery adventurers make a living in Oregon with night-time trespassing raids on to land owned by an effete Englishman played by Toby Jones – he is the owner of the first cow in the territory. They secretly milk it and use the resulting precious liquid for their delicious buttermilk scones that they sell at market. But disaster beckons. It’s a rich and satisfying tragicomedy of early capitalism.
28 May

Cruella

The public’s appetite for prequels, preboots and origin myths being apparently as strong as ever, here is the Wicked-style portrait of the legendary villain as a young woman. It’s the early life of Cruella de Vil, who would go on to be the monstrous dognapper from 101 Dalmatians, here played by Emma Stone. She is a young fashion designer working for the formidable Baroness von Hellman (Emma Thompson). Will Cruella succumb to the destiny forced upon her by her first name? Was she originally called Kinda?
28 May

After Love

Bafta-nominated director Aleem Khan makes a much talked-about feature film debut with Joanna Scanlan as Mary Hussain, who converted to Islam when she married, and has been living a contented life in Dover. But when her husband dies unexpectedly, Mary makes a startling discovery while going through his affairs, a secret over the Channel in Calais. An intriguing parable about contemporary British and European identity.
4 June

The Father

At 83, Anthony Hopkins became the oldest best actor Oscar winner for this film, based on the original French stage play by Florian Zeller. Hopkins plays an old man who is descending into dementia – to the horror of his daughter and carer, played by Olivia Colman. The story is told from his bewildered and terrified viewpoint, as people and places morph into each other as if in a nightmare.
11 June

In the Heights

The sidewalks of Washington Heights in Manhattan are no doubt pulsing with summer heat and sexuality in this movie musical, directed by Jon M Chu, and based on the Broadway stage show by Lin-Manuel Miranda. In the tight-knit Dominican community, Usnavi, played by Anthony Ramos, dreams of big things but for now runs a neighbourhood bodega that is the focus for all the local dramas, tragedies and comedies – all the more so when they realise Usnavi has sold a winning lottery ticket.
18 June

It Must Be Heaven

Elia Suleiman is the Palestinian film-maker who is often described as the Tati or the Keaton of his age. This movie has him playing himself: a dapper figure sauntering across continents with the impassive, equable calm of the cartoon Pink Panther, trying to get funding for a new movie project. Everywhere, his absurdist, satirical gaze discloses the pomposity of officialdom, and the freedom and prosperity that non-Palestinians take for granted.
18 June

In the Earth

After his bold but flawed attempt at a mainstream-lush adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, British director Ben Wheatley returns to the kind of stuff his fanbase are yearning for: horror. Joel Fry, Reece Shearsmith, Hayley Squires and Ellora Torchia star in this disquieting tale about a scientist and park official who venture into a gloomy forest with a view to making biochemical analysis of soil and plants. But there is something rather nasty deep in the foliage.
18 June

The Reason I Jump

The lived experience of people with autism is the subject of this immersive documentary from Jerry Rothwell, based on the 2007 bestseller written by the Japanese non-verbal autistic writer Naoki Higashida at the age of 13, using alphabet-grid prompts and transcribed by his mother. This movie shows us the sensory effects of neurodiverse people as it highlights the lives of non-verbal young adults in India, Sierra Leone, the United States and the United Kingdom.
18 June

Supernova

Lovely, heartfelt performances from Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth as Tusker and Sam, a couple who have been together for years: they are a novelist and musician who have had to put their careers on hold because Tusker has early-onset dementia. The two decide to go on a campervan holiday up to the north of England, to drop in on Sam’s family and to come to terms with the fact that this will be their last intimate time together while Tusker is still well. Tucci and Firth have a sweet and gentle chemistry, and it’s a lovely moment when Firth gives his own performance of Elgar’s Salut d’Amour on the piano.
25 June

Censor

A grippingly lairy, seedy pulp-horror melodrama from first-time director Prano Bailey-Bond, set in the fag-ashy British 1980s, and starring Niamh Algar as a woman who works as a film censor. She is haunted by a childhood trauma, now a cold case that the police have long since given up on. And then, with her censor’s pencil at the ready, she has to watch a strange low budget film whose grisly woodland scenes are just like the ones in her nightmares and PTSD flashbacks. Does this film-maker know something about her past?
25 June

Black Widow

Cate Shortland, who made the great Australian film Somersault, now directs this big-ticket superhero movie, in which Black Widow from Avengers takes centre-stage in the 24th MCU film, and one which Marvel fans have long been yearning. Scarlett Johansson returns as the former FSB agent Black Widow (that is, Natasha Romanoff) after the events of Captain America: Civil War, in which she is isolated and must fight to survive. The film brings in Florence Pugh as an ally of Romanoff’s and also Rachel Weisz as Melina Vostokoff, her handler from the world of espionage.
9 July

Cinderella

Pitch Perfect producer Kay Cannon directs this new live-action reboot of Cinderella, with James Corden as co-writer. The Grammy-nominated singing star Camila Cabello takes the leading role of Cinders, yearning for her prince. Idina Menzel plays the evil stepmother, Britain’s Nicholas Galitzine is the handsome Prince Robert, and Broadway star Billy Porter is Fab G, the genderqueer Fairy Godparent. (There is no word yet on Buttons, but surely Christopher Biggins is available?)
16 July

Deerskin

You want weird? French film-maker and DJ Quentin Dupieux will give you weird in this bizarre comedy-horror which might turn out to be 2021’s late-night cult special. Jean Dujardin (perhaps destined to be for ever known as the silent star of The Artist) plays a very strange man who is obsessed with a deerskin-fringed jacket that he has just bought for an exorbitant sum, along with a video camera; these two items inspire him to become an independent film-maker with the help of a waitress and film student, played by Adèle Haenel.
16 July

The Sparks Brothers

Edgar Wright is one of Britain’s most creative and prolific film-makers; his new drama Last Night in Soho is due in the autumn. But meanwhile here’s his labour-of-love 135-minute documentary about the LA pop duo Sparks, who were big in Britain and 70s veterans of Top of the Pops. (Brothers Ron and Russell Mael have incidentally written the music and screenplay for Leos Carax’s forthcoming Annette, with Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard). Wright interviews Sparks superfans like Jonathan Ross, Björk, Todd Rundgren and Patton Oswalt.
29 July

The Green Knight

The mysterious Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – famously edited and translated by JRR Tolkien – is now adapted for the movies for the first time since 1983. Ralph Ineson plays the strange Green Knight who arrives at the court of King Arthur (Sean Harris) and demands the head of Sir Gawain (Dev Patel) in a bizarre game. Alicia Vikander and Joel Edgerton co-star.
30 July

The Beatles: Get Back

Peter Jackson has already put up online a mouthwatering taster for his new Beatles documentary, about the making of their album Let It Be. This boils down 56 hours’ worth of unseen footage originally shot by Michael Lindsay-Hogg for his documentary, released in 1970. But it’s a creative riposte to the Lindsay-Hogg film, which gave us a picture of rancour and acrimony. Jackson’s film is reportedly a revisionist account, showing us a world of creativity and friendship that remained strong, despite the pressure.
27 August

• This article was amended on 17 May 2021. An earlier version incorrectly said 1973 was the last time Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was adapted for a feature film.